Translate UK

Client: Translate UK
Project: WordPress website design and build
Sector: Language services - translation, interpreting and British Sign Language
Live site: translateuk.net

The background

Translate UK supply professional interpreters and translators across the United Kingdom, working in over 200 languages and dialects. Their work spans ten distinct services, from document translation and face-to-face interpreting through to British Sign Language, deaf relay interpreters, transcription and note taker services.

It is a business where the stakes are unusually high. A mistranslated medical instruction, a missing interpreter at a tribunal hearing, an inaccurate legal document, these are not inconveniences. They affect outcomes in people's lives. The website needed to carry that weight.

The challenge

The core difficulty was breadth. Translate UK offer ten services across at least nine sectors, in 200-plus languages.

A procurement officer at an NHS trust, a legal aid solicitor booking an interpreter at short notice, a charity arranging a home visit, a marketing team needing consistent messaging across multiple territories, each arrives with a completely different question. A single generic "we do translation" page would have failed all of them equally.

The second challenge was credibility. In this sector, buyers are cautious and often working within formal procurement frameworks. The site had to answer "can we trust these people with something that matters?" before it answered anything else.

Leading with who they work with

The strongest asset Translate UK had was their client list, and it was being underused. The new site brings it forward and gives it room.

The organisations showcased include the Legal Aid Agency, the Ministry of Justice, the NHS, Ramsdens Solicitors and Makin Dixon Solicitors. That is a genuinely rare combination of names, and it does specific work for the visitor. Central government and NHS relationships signal that Translate UK have already cleared public sector procurement, vetting and compliance hurdles, the exact hurdles a cautious buyer is worried about. The named law firms demonstrate depth in the legal sector rather than a single lucky contract.

Rather than dropping these into a footer logo strip where they would be scrolled past, we treated them as a considered part of the page — presented cleanly, with space around them, positioned where they support the decision a visitor is actually making.

The downloadable file directory

We built a structured downloads area holding client-facing resources, the documents prospective and existing clients need to hand rather than have to email and wait for.

This solves a real operational problem. In a business where a procurement team may need a service specification, or a solicitor needs paperwork before booking, every request that arrives by email is a delay for the client and an admin task for Translate UK. Making those documents self-serve removes friction from the sales process and workload from the office at the same time.

It is managed entirely through WordPress. The team upload, replace and organise files themselves, important for documents that need updating as rates, services and compliance requirements change.

Structuring by service and by sector

The site is organised along two axes, because visitors arrive thinking in two different ways.

Some know the service they need: document translation, remote interpreting, BSL, transcription, legal aid interpreters at legal aid rates. Others know only their sector and its problem: legal, medical, education, charity, financial and insurance, pharmaceutical, technical, personal injury and clinical negligence, government and public sector.

Building both routes means a solicitor and a hospital administrator each land on language that reflects their world rather than generic marketing copy. It also creates a broad, well-differentiated set of landing pages that earn organic visibility for the specific, high-intent searches this sector generates — which tend to be narrow and urgent rather than broad and exploratory.

Built for the client to run

Everything sits in WordPress. Services, sector pages, the downloads directory and the organisations showcase are all editable in-house without developer involvement, a practical requirement for a business whose service list and client relationships keep growing.

The build is mobile-first throughout, with clear contact routes on every page. That matters more here than in most sectors: a significant share of enquiries are time-pressured, made from a courtroom corridor, a ward or a client meeting, on a phone, by someone who needs an interpreter today.

The outcome

Translate UK now have a site that matches the seriousness of what they do. The credentials that win work are visible early, the resources clients need are available without an email exchange, and every one of the sectors they serve has a page that speaks its own language — which, for a language services company, seems like the least we could do.

Need a WordPress website that earns trust before the first phone call? Get in touch.